Martin, a self-proclaimed open book, says what he thinks. He’s ultra-competitive, but what he loves besides his wife and kids, is teaching math and coaching.

The Redskins football coach for the past 17 years and girls basketball coach for the past nine, Martin is big on self-evaluation – not just of himself, but of his teams too.

“When I was younger, I wasn’t so critical of myself, and I didn’t look that hard,” he said. “You’re always looking to point the finger and the reasons why you weren’t successful.”

That’s why he holds his team to a standard of self-evaluation.

How did the Division IV team lose just one regular season game? It’s no secret.

They watched film. Every minute. Every possession. Every fist-pumping celebration. Every broken play.

“We talk openly and honestly about all of it,” Martin said. “We point out all the good things. There are plenty of good things – and the things that might of helped us, might have given us an edge, just as they move into the off-season and think about what they want to improve on next year. They saw against a really good team what our problems were.”

Including the late-game out-of-bounds play that kept them from state. The Redskins struggled to get the ball inbounds. It was the same thing they saw in their regular season game against Beachwood. Seeing film helped them change some positioning, but in the end, Martin said it still didn't work.

"I took responsibility for it," Martin said.

Junior Jenna Stegmaier is a carnivore of game tape. Most nights, after she’s watched the film during her lunch hour at school, Stegmaier goes home and breaks down film on her iPhone or computer with her father.

“I go over the plays that I did wrong and that I did right, she said. “I look over them to see what I can improve on.”

Then came last Monday, when Cuyahoga Heights watched the film from its loss in the regional final to Zanesville Rosecrans on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

“We watched the first quarter and we were doing good. Second quarter, doing good. Every time we turned the ball over, it was like ‘if we didn’t turn it over there, we would have won. If we made that shot, we would have won.' It was depressing.

“But it’s a game and we’ll be back at it next year.”

While it was painful for the junior to watch the film, she said it was good for her team to watch it because the pain of watching it outweighed the pain and regret of never knowing and growing from what they learned.

“Watching the film and seeing how every little mistake really makes a difference in the long run hurt us, it just sucked,” she said. “If we didn’t watch it though, we would have just been like, ‘Okay, we lost.’

“Seeing all the opportunities we had, if we would have just took that one extra step, that one extra dribble, we would have been going to state. It was awful, but it really helped us because now we know next time to keep going to get that loose ball.”

That’s the self-evaluation Martin thinks is important to his teams. It’s not a foolproof method though. Some players aren’t comfortable outside their comfort zone.

“Sometimes you have to do some things you haven’t done against other teams you have to play,” Martin said. “Some of the players, I think, kind of rose to the challenge and we had a couple others who still need to push themselves a bit.”

This isn’t just a one-way street down Self-Evaluation Lane for Cuyahoga Heights’ players. The road is full of 16-through-18 year olds and their middle age coaches.

“We’ll point out when we made a bad call,” Martin said. “If we put players in a bad situation and your honest about it and you feel bad about it, I think it goes a long way.”

Stegmaier laughed when asked about her coach owning up to his mistakes, especially since a bunch of teenagers know what happens when they tell their parents they did something wrong.

“We’re not going to tell him, but if he said, ‘This is my fault,’ we get that sense,” she said. “Yeah. We agree.”

The final session of film this year was full of disappointment. In watching film, the Redskins realized that both games they lost this year, the first against Beachwood in the regular season and then the one against Rosecrans in the playoff, were lost on a bad out-of-bounds play.

However, showing the team the film allowed Cuyahoga Heights’ coaching staff to point out all the good that did come out of those 32 minutes on the hardwood.

“They know they didn’t lose to a team they necessarily should have beat," Martin said. “It wasn’t that we laid an egg. It was that we were so close and didn’t find a way to win, but there’s no shame in losing to them. That was important to make sure the girls understood.”

Watching film after a loss, Stegmaier said, is awful. During three lunch periods, Cuyahoga Heights was open and honest.

Next year, that honesty could take them to a state title.

Contact high school sports reporter Stephanie Kuzydym by email (skuzydym@cleveland.com) or on Twitter (@stephkuzy). Or log in and leave a message in the comments section below.

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